Dedicated to one particular daybreak, who arrived a year and a half before I did into the family, and who was there when the internal mountains finally broke forth.

I.
A vast rump humps up,
A score of furlongs long or more,
Rippling with grassy-rugged rock-muscle,
Though still, still as the ages,
Worn by wind and ever-rain into the terrain
We see from so small a person-body here
In delighted fear and humble awe.

The great green-mottled form is still, I say.
Still, it rises, or seems to be rising
Right now as we meet it with heart-wide eyes,
Nostrils flared in joy-terror at the psychic fragrance
That with mountainous flagrance flouts our small notions
Of small loveliness with vast blasting majesty.

The great green-rippled length looks still, I say,
But just about to move at any second. We small ones
Can feel the rock’s pent up motion in our small bones,
As if those stone ripples – massive shadowed dips really,
Miniature valleys and downs – as if those muscled curves
Might ripple forth and shift any moment right before our
Awestruck eyes, as if those ripples might rumble and slide,
And rearing up from the mountainside’s far side, unseen
Until now, a great granite head might turn to look at us
With a monstrous crag of face, two incredible deep-set holes
Of verdant luminescence for the man-mountain’s eyes,
Burning holes in our mind’s with the impossible gaze, a last
Happy-mad sight for mere mortals dying in deep love and satisfaction
At a mere glance from one of God’s hidden creatures.

So the mountain’s features make us feel,
down here in our smallness.

II.
Maybe you’re not a man-mountain at all, but a
Beast-upthrust shepherded by some unseen Titan.
I know you and your siblings are mere foothills
In light of Himalayas or Rockies, yet no other range
Rumbles quite like your primordial morphology.

They are all kings and queens and sentries towering,
Where you are humbler and hoarier in your low crouching,
Ready to rise, to spring bestial and roaring; and yet
You are not only rough, but elegant also in the green sheen
Of your mist-slaked, sunwashed pelts, which appear
Nearly velvet, if they could but be felt by
Gargantuan coarse Hands rubbing and petting,
Accompanied by cyclopean Voice acclaiming: ‘Good boy!’

Or maybe you are the kind of beast, shy but fierce,
That is only to be tracked, flushed out, and wrangled,
A pursuit perhaps thought better of once attempted,
Resulting in casualties even among gigantic hunters.

III.
But maybe your kith is not found above-ground at all.
Maybe you are an under-thing calling to our own under-ness.
‘Deep calls to deep’ in your emerald and umber swells.
I’m sure I heard at least one observer cry: ‘sea monster!’

Yes, that too rings true. Your great swimming shapes
Have hurled us into deeps. Maybe it is a massive
Fanned tailfin that will any moment unfurl from
Your unseen extremity, and a yawning maw
From the other end, a great seeking mouth agape
With such width as could only be oceanic.

Aye, we are sailors who catch a glimpse of your
Deep-sport: wave thrashing or ocean-bottom crawling,
either way capsizing our hearts and swallowing us
Whole in jubilant excess. Such depths in heights!

IV.
Whatever you are – man-mountain or beast-mountain or
Megalithic leviathan – you are one of God’s monsters
I am glad to know. I am privileged to have made your
Face-to-face acquaintance more than once, each time a shattering
Meeting, if fleeting.

I thank you for the meal you made of me (mere morsel at best,
I know – more likely a kernel or crumb) and I thank you for
The kind meal you gave me each time, each time a little more,
Nourishing me from weakness to strength to strength, still small,
But growing, growing, eroding and rising mountainous inside,
Until at last this pen could bleed a little blot in your honour.

Brother Crag and Sister Cairngorm, I am blessed to serve
Alongside you at the curve of our mortally wounded world
That in one day dying will rise again renewed and glory-flooded,
Knowledge-deluged, where your great folds and curves will finally
Shift and coarse in awful grace and you will at last lift up your
Glorious head and all will see

Weather: check.grey ambient striated with echo-shine, a sheening mistwaving in on the wheeled capsule that contains me,a dull ache in the car’s bones, prankster wind tappingthe car’s shoulder and hiding, shoving from behind,then slamming with both fists the car’s face; sunshine isthe bigger prankster, like a dull child waiting it out for hours or days just to jump out and shout surprise;drivers beware the startling childish light!

Pedestrians: check.uncle Bunk is cracking brains with the junk he sellsthere by the petrol station looming up and flying by;gaggle-girls are gagging on fake-tan fumes and spottychoppy boys ogle the bleach and dye and overfilled fabric;that one’s mind is a tree sprouting from his brain, soobvious to everyone but him; this one’s heart explodesin a scattershot of men’s eyes as she cries it out; dogsare leading owners and little children circle in on theirvictims; the timeworn old ease on at a pace unseeable.

Awareness is the key. Stay alert!things are all that they seem and so much more in every pore and pock; in very contour a chasm liesunplumbed, all portals are wide open and universesare bleeding into every single object, the road is notmere concrete, nor mere metaphor, but an unspoolingribbon of existence that begins and ends in poly-onticswamplands of ecstasy and terror from which emergeall beings that you encounter on your automotivejourney; open the apertures of your mind and of the car’sskin or you will die in a rainbow of undiscovered blood,a storm of gleaming bones you could not have guessed; you have been warned.

Awareness is the key and its hardest part is that you must, with the same piercing sight as you give,be seen by other drivers.

Addendum:‘Where you can’t be seen, such as at a hump bridge, you may need to use your horn.’Proof that we are coiled goring beasts at the very least.

Rack-and-bone boy unwindingstruggle-thin sinews, grapple-scraping your brick in a grim hug of spite,his hunger-bright eyesglaring in at your window,which you just now realise you’veleft unlatched and so you snatchat the hasp and hit it homewith a satisfying click.

You can see, as you fall back from the double-glazing, the bird-heart beating beneath his nearly translucent skin, bare-chested as he has come to you,baring a soul you wish he’d leave well enough hidden.

II.outside,he’s out, to one sideon all sides,no way in,all ways out,out.

he flails out there,a filthy snowflake vanishingin all that endless whiteness.

III.Conflagration! Skulls Aflame! Crime of Passion!Run! Run! Run for your lies! The skies are bleeding!The sticky-blooded bones are sticking out on stick men stacked in writhing piles on your doorsteps and all the world is laughing behind its hand at the cosmic jubilee that is coming down on high heads un-expectant and unrepentant!

Into the gloom,Into the gloom,Make room for meIn the purpling blue-black Gloom.

Goblin haunt and ghost swath,The moon’s house full Of hoary hostsWith silver beards dangling Over us like stellar moss, Angling in all that Purpling blue-black gloomTo catch and weave usInto their starry loom.

Into the gloom,Into the gloom,Make room for me,Old night’s got no bite worse Than curse of glaring sun.

Indeed, night’s many-eyed arachnid visage Is a goose-fleshing benediction After the cyclopean passage of Sol’s Gigantic red-eyed malediction.(So say we people of the hot sun-landsWith apologies to you of the steep and stark,Cold and dark highlands.)

Into the gloom,Into the gloom,Make room for meIn the purpling black-winged Gloom.

Fold me into its shaded shapes,Limitless and lost until dawn,Peopled with whatever it is peopled,The night brood,My true breed.